Hi all,
I have been thinking recently about ATLs and whether it is possible to have territories flip their majority identity with a relatively late POD.
In OTL, there have been many attempts at doing this via discriminatory policy and land reform, such as Ireland, Finland, Algeria, Tunisia, South Africa etc. While these were all successful at concentrating land, wealth and political power; and also increasing the minority share of the population; they never flipped the majority culture other than in tiny areas. That meant in all these cases the majority sooner or later took power and marginalized the previous dominant minority. The one possible exception to this is Israel, but this is still in the middle of the process, and it looks likely Palestinians will grow into a large majority in the combined area, so it is unclear how it will work out. The only other examples I can think of are in depopulated areas like the Americas and Australia. Are there any I have missed?
This got me wondering about what made the modern period so much different to earlier time periods, where relatively small number of migrants made a huge cultural switch: Turks in Anatolia, Arabs across the Fertile Crescent and North Africa, Anglo-Saxons in Britain, Scots in Northern Ireland etc.
I have two theories. The first is the industrial revolution and the demographic transition. Before the modern period, the dominant and suppressed group both grew quickly. Afterwards, the dominant group was wealthy enough they saw falling fertility, while the suppressed group continued to breed rapidly in their poverty - aided further by better famine reduction techniques and medical advances from modernity. This meant that any cultural change was facing an increasing demographic uphill.
The second theory I have is that literacy, modern communication and nationalist ideology meant much greater identity cohesion and cultural memory of the suppressed group. People like the native Irish and the Algerians felt a greater sense of collective identity, and remembered wrongs, than did the native Britons. This caused a sense of national pride which led to a much greater unwillingness to culturally and linguistically convert.
What does this mean for writing alternate history? I think it means mass cultural change requires delayed nationalism (perhaps from an averted French Revolution), technology slowdown (later or more geographically narrow industrial revolution), slower demographic transition by elites (a more religious population) or greater famines/plagues for the poor through harsher policy.
Thoughts?
I have been thinking recently about ATLs and whether it is possible to have territories flip their majority identity with a relatively late POD.
In OTL, there have been many attempts at doing this via discriminatory policy and land reform, such as Ireland, Finland, Algeria, Tunisia, South Africa etc. While these were all successful at concentrating land, wealth and political power; and also increasing the minority share of the population; they never flipped the majority culture other than in tiny areas. That meant in all these cases the majority sooner or later took power and marginalized the previous dominant minority. The one possible exception to this is Israel, but this is still in the middle of the process, and it looks likely Palestinians will grow into a large majority in the combined area, so it is unclear how it will work out. The only other examples I can think of are in depopulated areas like the Americas and Australia. Are there any I have missed?
This got me wondering about what made the modern period so much different to earlier time periods, where relatively small number of migrants made a huge cultural switch: Turks in Anatolia, Arabs across the Fertile Crescent and North Africa, Anglo-Saxons in Britain, Scots in Northern Ireland etc.
I have two theories. The first is the industrial revolution and the demographic transition. Before the modern period, the dominant and suppressed group both grew quickly. Afterwards, the dominant group was wealthy enough they saw falling fertility, while the suppressed group continued to breed rapidly in their poverty - aided further by better famine reduction techniques and medical advances from modernity. This meant that any cultural change was facing an increasing demographic uphill.
The second theory I have is that literacy, modern communication and nationalist ideology meant much greater identity cohesion and cultural memory of the suppressed group. People like the native Irish and the Algerians felt a greater sense of collective identity, and remembered wrongs, than did the native Britons. This caused a sense of national pride which led to a much greater unwillingness to culturally and linguistically convert.
What does this mean for writing alternate history? I think it means mass cultural change requires delayed nationalism (perhaps from an averted French Revolution), technology slowdown (later or more geographically narrow industrial revolution), slower demographic transition by elites (a more religious population) or greater famines/plagues for the poor through harsher policy.
Thoughts?
